Eat Less, Live Longer

Your Practical Guide to Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition

During my third year of medical school I stumbled upon an online article about calorie restriction with optimal nutrition. I read about an apparently simple diet intervention that prolonged the average and maximum lifespan of laboratory animals such as yeast, fruit flies, worms and mice. At that time, I wasn't aware that such experiments were already done on non-human primates too.
Honestly, I dismissed it as a curiosity, an intervention that could have some effect in simple organisms such as fruit flies, but something which would never work in complex beings like us. It just seemed too good to be true.
Time passed and proved me wrong. Given an early childhood fascination with the limits of life extension, I studied engineering and medicine in an attempt to radically prolong human lifespan. After a short stint of research in neural prosthetics in a German lab, I realized implanting artificial devices into the human body is not a long-term solution.
I returned home where I started the medical residency in geriatrics, the branch of medicine specialized in age-associated diseases. A funny thing happened then. Reading about theories of aging is one thing. Daily caring for people 3-4 times your age is a completely different thing and I started to connect the dots.
I noticed some people aged like wine and others aged like vinegar. According to their skinny frames and detailed lifetime stories, it looked like calorie intake had something to do with it. That's how I got started in typing the first words for this book.

********* TABLE OF CONTENTS ***********

Introduction 1
Basic Principles of Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition 4
What You Will NOT Find in this Book 5
How Should You Use This Book? 6
Less is More for Rodents. Is It the Same for Humans? 9
Indications and Contraindications of Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition 17
Medical Tests for Monitoring Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition 20
How Do You Choose Quality Food? 25
Where to Source Quality Food 25
When Looks May Deceive You 29
Which Food Choices Provide the Most Nutrients for the Least Amount of Calories? 35
Beverages 35
The Smoothie Formula 38
The Joys of Vegetables 41
The Basic Soup 49
The Wonders of Roe 52
How to Serve Fish 53
Sushi – the Perfect Ocean Food 56
Edible Mushrooms 58
Pates, Dips and Spreads 60
Animal Products and Offal 64
A Small Guide to Culinary Herbs and Spices 66
The Comfort of Herbal Teas 68
Desserts 70
A Raw Vegan Cake 74
Eating out When Restricting Calories 76
How to Turn Quality Ingredients into Amazing Dishes 79
Where Can You Source Nutritious Low-Calorie Recipes? 79
Cooking Utensils or Tools of the Trade 82
Calorie Restriction for the Long Term 85
The Ups and Downs of Fasting 86
How to Implement Calorie Restriction as a Full-Time Professional 88
The Practical Shopping List 90
How to Choose Dietary Supplements 93
Are There Alternatives to Calorie Restriction? 97
The End 109
Acknowledgments 111
Bibliography 113